Egil pulled out stored venison and biscuit from the satchel he carried, and he and Skarga ate, cuddled together beneath the mast. Without appetite, she nibbled at the biscuit, but eating was difficult when she needed both hands to hang resolutely on. “Is it a bad storm?” mumbled Skarga between crumbs. She was soaked, and so were the crumbs.
Egil sniggered faintly. “I don’t think so, lady. They say it’s good sailing weather. They say we’ll be there in three days or less.”
She glared. “You didn’t tell me you know where we’re going.”
“Well,” Egil chewed the last strip of meat and spoke with a full mouth. “It doesn’t make any difference. They say we’re going to the Sheep Islands. Well, we don’t know where that is, do we?”
Skarga stared belligerent into the slap of the wind. “I hate sheep.”
“Reliable things, sheep,” one of the men behind her said. Wet straggles of hair and a red beard, the crewman was broader than tall, eyes crinkled, sea water streaming into the weathered alleys across his face. Always moving, the crew had until now ignored her. This one said, “Leave sheep be, they’ll give a full service. Everything a man needs in life. Clothes, drink and food. The sheep is Fricco’s best gift.”
“Only one thing they can’t give,” laughed another man.
“Depends,” the first one said. “If you’re not too fussy -”
A smaller neater man, very dark, glowered. “And they smell.”
“You smell too,” the first one said.
“Safn’s only interested in lamb’s tails,” the big one sniggered. “Milky tongues and baby eyes. Doesn’t care for mutton grease, do you my friend?”
The dark one they’d called Safn hunched his shoulders, unoffended. “Everyone to their own.”
Egil now discovered an increasing interest in the ship’s destination. “Does Captain Grimr keep sheep then? Does he have a farm?”
The second man looked down and laughed again. “What? Captain Grimr? No, he has no farm. Not a farming type of man, is our good captain.”
Egil was thinking up the next question, but the men turned away. The direction of the wind was changing, Grimr had taken the tiller, shouting orders, leechlines to be tightened. The ship’s prow dipped into a sudden black yawn between the swells, and Skarga, head whipped forward and thrown hard against the great hewn log of the mast, gasped and vomited again, struggling for breath. Egil looked at her with regret. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have eaten all those biscuits.”
The slime on the deck was washed away as black water hurtled from both sides and swept the timbers clean in rush and ebb. Then, steady into her new direction, the ship settled, accepted the current and sailed onwards, speeding westerly with the wind at her back and the sail stretched full as a belly after a feast.
Skarga clung to Egil. “Are there holes in the sides? Are we sinking?”
Egil, surprised, said, “Why would we?”
“Those waves cracked against us like Thor’s hammers. Is the wood split?”
Egil giggled. “Look, the sea’s peaceful now. It was only us taking the change in the wind.”
“I hate the sea,” whispered Skarga. “It frightens me. I hate being frightened.”
“You’re never frightened, lady,” frowned Egil.
“Never before I met Grimr,” muttered Skarga.
CHAPTER SIX
The day stretched inert and mindless, Skarga clung to the one place she seemed safe, and no one spoke to her for endless hours. Although the limitations of the ship gathered the crew close around her, whether at rest or at work they ignored her as easily as they would drifting kelp. Skarga was used to being dismissed as irrelevant but even her father’s jarls had given her some credence as a woman capable of vision and hearing.
As the wind steadied, the men had no need to row and most stretched on the deck, sharing out strips of salted pork skin for chewing, then wood splinters for tooth picks. The captain stayed aft by the tiller as gradually the wind slunk low over the water’s surface, turning spray into a shivering froth. The sail lay flat, puffed anew, flattened and puffed again like a small belly ache. The men had been half dozing. One looked up, squinting into the high clouds. “Wind’s dropping. Do we take up oars?”
Another shook his head. “Ask Orm.”
“Our expert on sea-serpents,” sniggered one of the others, sprawled close to Skarga.
The big man was already amongst them. Orm grinned, long tongue licking the salt from his cracked lips. “Stupid bugger. What idiot was it came up with that, then?”
“Lodver’s idea,” the other nodded. “Telling tales to keep that pig-arsed chieftain sweet while the captain sorted his own plans.”
“Not like Lodver to have that much wit. Can’t think beyond his belly, that one.”
Orm shook his head and the thin coil of his hair twisted back over his shoulder with its own independent will. “Leave the lad alone. Lodver’s straight.”
“Not like me, you mean? Bent as a fish hook!”
“You go sing with the dolphins, Halfdan, or you’ll end up orca fodder. The girl’s listening and the captain isn’t sure yet.”
“Not sure?” Halfdan was stocky and red bearded. He glanced up at Skarga, crouched little more than a leg’s stretch away. “So what’s she here for, if he’s not sure?”
“Go suck prick, stupid bugger. What do you think?” Orm continued picking his teeth.
“Never for himself?”
Orm flicked the little wooden splinter and its blob of salted bacon into Halfdan’s face. “Fuck you, boy. Watch your language. What would the captain want a skinny human bitch for, unless still deciding? Use what brain you have.”
Another of the crew, aimlessly scratching his crotch, eyed Skarga. “Deciding? The bitch is well past bleeding age. She’d know herself by now, wouldn’t she?”
Orm scowled. “Useless lumps.” He hauled himself upwards, hitching up his britches and kicking out at the men. “Back to work. Hoist oars. Halfdan to the aft lines. Move. The captain’s watching you pricks, and so am I.”
Eventually a sullen twilight slipped down towards the colourless horizon, merging water with sky until only one thin cut divided world from fantasy. The encroaching gloom swirled inwards and the world shrank blind and silent as a dream. Skarga still slumped amidships, leaning back against the mast, clinging on when the decks lurched. The rolling eternity of the waters and the groan of the expanding wood brought persistent nausea and she yearned only for sleep. But there was nowhere to lie, to stretch or even to curl. And there was nowhere dry.
It had been a very long time since Grimr had taken any notice of her, but his voice came above and behind her once again. She turned in too much of a hurry, immediately dizzy. He seemed to guess about the dizziness. “Best not to move quickly,” said the man looming over her. “Nor any need, unless we capsize. Are you hungry?”
Hardly reassured, she said, “No.” She had to force her lips to move. “Are we going to capsize?” Her tongue felt numb.
“You should eat anyway,” he said, ignoring her question. “Ship’s rations. Oat cakes and salt cod. But it’ll preserve your strength and keep you warm. I’ll have a tent set up shortly. Then you can sleep.”
There could be a tent? She could have been sheltered and protected all this time, but wasn’t? She said in a hurry, “A real tent? I’m so tired. When do we get to land?” She was going to ask if he meant to kill her before or after arrival, but looked at the tight decline of his mouth, and did not say it.
“Two more days perhaps,” he said. “As for dying, that final destiny isn’t up to any of us to choose.”
But she hadn’t said it. She had intended asking about her death but had decided to say nothing. His words startled her and she paused before answering. She looked down at the clasp of her own hands in her lap. Her fingers were wrinkled as if she had been sitting under water. “I’m just longing for solid ground. And I’m freezing.”
“Do as I tell you and eat,” he said.
“Then I’ll get you dry for the night.”
It was Safn who brought a cup and food. She drank the water, then picked at the dried fish, pulling off the flakes from the bone. Everything was wet. Safn watched her a moment, frowning. “It’s a wet world, lady. Better get used to it. Water and salt, salt and water. There’s those as like it, and those who don’t.” She stared up at him. He shrugged and wandered off.
Eventually Egil came, bringing his own supper, and ate beside her, chewing, grinning and speaking altogether. “Isn’t this amazing? Did you ever think the sea would be like this?”
“I never thought about it at all,” muttered Skarga. “I never had to and I never wanted to.” She watched Egil’s munching with faint disgust. “When are they going to put up the tent?”
“Is it night already? I couldn’t possibly sleep. It’s far too exciting.”
Skarga had found it unutterably tedious and although she had done nothing all day, the buffeting of the sea, the lash of the wind endlessly in her eyes and the lurch of the deck beneath her had been exhausting. There seemed to be too much air and too much sky. It was a different world. “I’m so weary. You do what you like. They can throw me overboard in my sleep, I don’t care, but I have to lie down.”
Grimr had appeared again. He held a great white bundle and for a moment Skarga thought it was a blanket, a spare piece of the sail or a pillow quilt. Then she saw its depth and gloss and as he moved closer within the falling darkness, it shimmered as if somehow alight. “My men are throwing up the tent. When you get inside, take off your wet clothes and dry yourself with one of the blankets, then lay it on the deck. Use the other blankets as a mattress, then wrap yourself in this.”
She had never seen anything like it. “It’s fur,” she said, wondering.
He raised one eyebrow. “Be careful. It’s heavy.”
Skarga went where he pointed. A triangle of oiled leather had been slung over two tented timbers. Crawling into the unexpected warmth of the shadows, she sat, hugging her knees, enveloped in the huge bliss of white fur. Having done as Grimr had told her, she closed her eyes and was asleep before her mind had made its first circle.
She woke to someone lifting the tent flap and crawling in. Egil said, “Odinn’s miracles, you’ve been treated like a queen. It’s raining outside.”
With the sweet ease after a night’s deep sleep, Skarga opened her eyes and smiled into the tickle of the soft white fur. “Is it morning?”
Egil nodded. “Though barely light yet. The captain says you can stay here until your clothes dry off and the weather improves. And there’s boiled onions and salted bacon for break-fast.”
For many long hours she remained snuggled, until, greatly to her own surprise, the inactivity bored her and she missed the slap of the wind and the rolling waters. Almost at once the man Grimr was at the opening of the tent. Very briskly he said, “Up now, and breathe good salt again. You’ve adjusted to the swell, now learn to walk with it. There’s a long time before you’ll see land again. Get dressed quickly, and I’ll be back.”
Skarga pulled on her clothes in a hurry, but almost immediately the leather tent disappeared with a crack, lifted from its perch and folded from sight. Two of the crew grinned down at her. Grimr was above her too but he wasn’t grinning. He held out one hand. Skarga passed him the great fur pelt. He took it and nodded. “Walk the deck, find your feet. If you take no exercise, you’ll feel sea sick again when you reach dry land.”
“Not that land ever is dry,” said one of the men.
“It’ll be pissing down, as usual,” said the dark man Safn.
It was, in the end, another very long day. The wind stayed brisk and the crew rowed only mid afternoon as the waves lulled into a more gentle swell. Eager to keep out of anyone’s path, Skarga took little exercise in spite of orders. It was Lodver in the end, not the Second Orm, who came to speak to her. A short man with cropped dark hair and a trimmed beard, he had eyes as keen as a hunting bird and muscles which rounded out his sleeves like waves. He said, “I’m sent to see you comfortable, lady.”
“I’m supposed to be walking,” Skarga nodded. “But I get in the men’s way. And my feet slip.”
“If the captain says it, lady, then not one of the men will resent it. They’ll move for you, I promise.” He paused, then said, “I’ve been speaking to your boy. We wondered, the captain and I, what you - know about him.”
She thought it a strange thing to ask. “Egil? He’ll tell you willingly,” she said. “He’s very little history to speak of. What on earth would you want to know about him?”
Lodver nodded. “Ah, I see. It doesn’t matter then.”
When twilight sneaked to black, she slept again under the shroud of the makeshift tent, wrapping herself the nightlong in silken white fur. She dreamed and the dreams sang.
On the third day the sky remained overcast, visibility was sullen and the wind fitful. Then someone shouted and pointed out to sea. A few of the men were fishing, seated lounging on their sea chests with their feet up on the gunwales. Now they turned and hurried to see the sleek grey of the coast slip up over the horizon.
“Oars,” shouted Grimr. Fishing gear was stowed and there was a scuttle to the oar crutches. The wind was increasingly erratic, gusting into sudden flurries. The sail filled and cracked, bursting full, then whipping flat. The oars swung out in a great splash of unison. The men began to chant. It was an unknown language and Skarga understood none of it, but the rhythm was deep and low and mesmerising.
Beneath the chanting, the ocean became the music and something large leapt from the water just ahead, gleaming in the first scatter of starlight. Then another. Skarga had seen them before, though never so close, sometimes in the summer when they had visited the long bay of the fjord. There were ten, then maybe twenty, leaping through the high curve of the bow wave, racing the serpent prow, always ahead. They sluiced the water, turning black to silver. Along the ship’s sides, the men strained at their oars, the chanting deepened, now faster, and the dancing dolphins were the melody.
Egil liked to sing. Skarga looked, wondering if the child had picked up the tune but she could not see him. Then she could see little of anything. Not yet night, though the sky was low and ever-darkening, moonlight, somehow, was in her eyes. The brilliance of silver sheen came from somewhere else. The nausea had returned.
Beyond the rowers, arms stretched, sweat-slick muscled accord, flexing forward, back, forward, the splash of thirty oars and the sound of a single beat in moving harmony, she stared at the water. But she found there was no water and there was no boat and for a dreadful, twisted moment that slanted and flashed sudden lights, she saw snow. A sled was hurtling across the white ground and the wind cut across it. Snow crystals leapt like the sea spray and the fish. Then, as she turned, frightened, there was the beast who owned the pelt behind her. Grimr’s white fur was alive, a great running bear, mountain sized.
She had wrapped herself all night in the shimmer of it but now it chased her, huge, panting and clawed. Skarga blinked, the moonlight from no moon blinded her still and the snow became liquid with glazed transparency. Through it, the dancing dolphins appeared again, leaping to the music of the chanting crew, and Skarga watched and listened as they sang. The snow had melted and the sea returned but through the dazzle of the water, the great white bear turned its head and stared at her, black eyes that went sharp through her heart. Utterly confused, she held her breath and squeezed shut her eyes. And then she saw the last vision of all, the eagle eye, black and golden and it looked straight inside her. Its beak, hooked and blood stained, reached for her.
She began to fall. She toppled, unable to find a hold, for there was snow, and ocean, and the vivid sky’s arc of intense cobalt blue behind the eagle’s wing.
“Go back,” said a deep voice. “This is not your place.”
She shivered.
When she opened her eyes once more, she was back on the ship and the dolphins, tiring of the game, were turning aside.
There was no chanting and no music but only the rhythm of the rowers and the great tumult of the sea. There were gulls and the ship had pulled in close to land.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was low and scrubby with the barren smell of windy brine. The precious hope of release from constant heaving seas presented no wild cliffs nor tempting turquoise inlets. This was not a land of fjords but of flat sandy platitudes. It slumped dull under a dull light as the ship pulled in.
Twenty men hurtled over the sides into the shallows, dragging ropes and shouting. Shouting back, those men left on board stowed the oars and fed out coils of rope to those hauling onshore. The ship, all its tonnage streaming black waters and its timbers groaning, was slowly dragged up onto the sands. Skarga, slung sideways, clung on. Grimr, wide leg-balanced on the slanted wet deck, pointed, then turning back to the few men behind him, directed manoeuvres. As the keel scraped rock and showered wedges of sand high either side, the captain finally leapt the gunwales and landed on the scrubby beach beside his grounded ship. He stalked its boundaries, ordering the securing of the ropes. Above him, peering over the side without other place to cling, Skarga waited. Grimr laughed and held out his arms. “Jump – or climb.”
She climbed. The ship’s flanks curved out in their pleated clinkers, more horizontal now than vertical. Skirts gripped tight, Skarga reached the sand without tumble and tugged her cloak tight around her as the wind scoured damp sand into her eyes. Her feet squelched. Egil skipped over. “Sheep Islands. But I don’t see any sheep. Isn’t this incredible? Did you see me helping? I couldn’t row of course, but I helped stow the oars afterwards.”
“Make yourself indispensable and they might not kill you.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 6